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thanks yes mine is working too.. the issue I was asking about was specifically premium encrypted channels.. as i can watch other stuff no problem.. just thought it maybe was too much of a coincidence that it stopped working when I put the hacked drives in.. more likely it appears to be that they were not hooked up for 2-3 weeks and comcast changed something in my acct..

All channels work for me. The only premium I have is HBO but I can record it and extract shows with no problem.

Please don't PM me or any other members looking for personal assistance. You'll do better by posting (after you've exhausted the search feature, of course) and taking advantage of the collective expertise of the membership instead of a single individual that may or may not be able to help you. Thank you and enjoy your stay at DDB!

encryption is off
pulling off shows with mfs ftp works fine...
pulling off with tytools works fine
converting to mpg with tytompg and putting back on with pytivo and they work fine

putting any .tmf or .ty back on (even those just pulled off and which convert to .mpg and then work fine) with
mfs_ftp doesn't work.. i get 600 or so seconds time and they only play a blank screen and go immediately to done..

is there a special fix for insertion using mfs_ftp on series 3 that I missed somewhere thanks..

this is the log inserting looks .like the number of bytes is wrong so it doesnt inser tthe object.
it really only sent about 512 meg.. in my little test file..

had replaced mfs_ftp with new version with patches but old files extracted with the old version would not insert correctly
(even though they converted to .mpg fine) had to re extract ... I think it had to do with the missing drm stuff in the .xml

anyway now it kinda workds but cannot play shows as they are reinserting while you used to be able to when using the older mfs_ftp on series 2.. Is this because we are not inserting till the end ??? whereas we use to do an insert after every part??????? If so can It be fixed.. it is a pain and unuseable to wait for an insert of a 8 gb show 2 hours b4 you can play it..

it did not like that at all and had a flashing red flag by the show when i went back and wouldn't play any longer.. bummer
there must be a way to remove this so that it can be pulled off with mrv or tivotogo???
I will keep looking.. any suggestions would be appreciated.

Finding the TiVo drive

Is there a simple way to find out which drive on the PC is the TiVo drive? I'm doing a little bit of automation, and the last manual bit left over is inputting the drive spec. It would be great if the script could find the TiVo drive itself, so there's no likelihood of a mistake. I'm running Debian "Etch" Linux on an AMD Athlon 64 x 2. Right now I've got the drive in as a run-time constant (sdb), but the drive mapping could easily change in between the times TiVo pushes an update.

Edit: Come to think of it, there is one other manual constant, and that is the software version. If there is an easy way to figure out the software version, I could automate that, as well.

If anyone is interested, here is the script so far. For any neophytes, it rather demonstrates the basic requirements for hacking a prom-modded Series III class TiVo. Forgive the very pedestrian approach to scripting.

Both of these scripts are designed to be used on an ordinary fairly recent Linux distribution running on a PC with a kernel of 2.6.26 or later. They may also work with a Live CD, but may not. The hack_tivoapp script can also be run on a live TiVo (untested) (tested 10/03/2012 by Dave20042004).

This of course assumes bootpage, tivopart, replace_initrd.x86 and its little null-linuxrc.img.gz null initrd are all in /hack on the PC under those exact names. It also requires a tarball (tivohacks.tar) (tivohacks32.tar or tivohacks64.tar) of all the files to be placed on the TiVo. I include the mfs utilities, TiVoWebPlus, busybox, /etc/profile, and /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author as well as the iptables hack in the tarball.

Edit: Automated the code a bit and added a more sophisticated tivoapp hacking routine. Replaced a user edited version string with a date string for archived kernel and tivoapp. Added a customized tivohacks32.tar and tivohacks64.tar to automate upgrades for both S3 and THD TiVos. Added bootpage parameter check. Added additional file checks. Revised hack_tivoapp so it should run on either a PC or a live TiVo (untested) (tested 10/03/2012 by Dave20042004). Added static variables for all directories and files at the top of the script to make user customization easier. Fixed a bug that mistakenly checked for the wrong name for the tarball file. Fixed a couple of missing quote marks that made the error report look odd.

Note: There is a small "bug" in the script in that should the user have a drive other than the TiVo drive on the PC with more than 9 partitions whose drive spec is lower than the TiVo's, the script will think the non-TiVo drive is a TiVo drive and quit searching. This will cause the script to fail. Anyone who has a drive with more than 9 partitions may need to modify the script or their system accordingly. This should be fixed, now.

Note: The hack_tivo script performs a check to make sure the potential target is a hard drive. One user employed a USB - SATA adapter that caused Linux to think it was a floppy, causing the script to fail. Modifying the check in line 9 at the top of the script 87 fixed the issue for him.

9.4 Working

My TiVo HD finally got the 9.4 upgrade last night, so I loaded the drive on the Linux workstation and used the little script above to hack the drive. There was a little bug (fixed in the script above) which caused the iptables file to be overwritten rather than saving a backup of the file. Other than that, it seems to be working just fine.

It only took about 7 minutues start to finish to upgrade the drive, and that includes the time to move the drive back and forth and to boot up the host PC. (Gawd, I love Linux!!) Moving the primary drive into an external Antec MX-1 housing and implementing the script have really made the upgrade process easy, yet still readily accessible to the user at the lowest levels. I don't even have to open up either the TiVo or the host PC.

I did the prom mod, and pulled the drive to do the software but it's a pain to pull the drive everytime there's a tivo upgrade! Ideally, if I could put in in a usb enclosure, boot into linux, run a script that re-hacks it, *THAT* would be killer!!!!

I don't know anything about programming/scripting, but if someone can point me in the right direction, maybe I can modify it and post an s2 version?

Jumping back into the scene after being gone for awhile. Had a hacked S1 in the 90's then moved to an HR10-250 a couple years ago. It's been working perfectly but now DirecTV's pulling the plug.

All I really do w/ my HR10-250 is extract shows for burning to DVD as well as enjoying Endpadplus to pad my recordings when possible.

So now I'm faced with buying a new TiVo. I'm planning to buy a TiVo HD XL and start service with my local cable company (I know DTV is coming out with a TiVo model but it'll be at least a year and they should have started working on this earlier).

So my question is, do I need to hack my PROM just to disable encryption? With my other TiVo models I just needed to install a hacked kernel.

I also recall that in the early days of the S2 there was talk of PROM hacking but an all-software solution was developed. Any chance of that here?

Basically I'm trying to find out if I should try and keep my HR10-250 running as long as possible or bite the bullet now and switch to a Cablecard TiVo.

In order to change the kernel, you must hack the PROM. In order to change the root fs software, you must change the kernel. Unless you come up with a new software exploit, then you'll have to hack the hardware to do anything.